MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Hillary Clinton Wants to Save Me from Loneliness and Honestly I’d Just Rather Die of It.

NOW THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY I’D BEEN HOPING FOR: The moon is open for business, and entrepreneurs are racing to make billions.

SHOT: Trump Lawyer Welcomes Mike Pence to Testify in J6 Case: He ‘Will Be Acquitted.’

CHASER: Pence Says He Would Testify Against Trump in Jan. 6 Trial: ‘We’ll Obey The Law.’

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Latest Housing Data Are Clear: ‘Bidenomics’ Is Heading Toward a Crash.

From the fourth quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2022, the U.S. housing market experienced one of the most significant increases in housing prices in American history. Data provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis show that over that two-year period, the average sales price of a home skyrocketed more than 36 percent, from $403,900 to a whopping $552,600.

For the first time in history, the 12-month increase in home prices topped 15 percent for seven quarters in a row, beginning in the second quarter of 2021.

Many current homeowners celebrated the unprecedented rise in housing values, but those rapid increases came with an important caveat: whenever housing prices increase as quickly as they have in recent years, an economic, stock market, and/or housing crash is almost certain to follow.

The evidence on this point is well established. In the 1970s, late 1980s, and in the early to mid-2000s, there were similarly large, sustained growths in housing prices. In every case, a large recession followed. And although the rule doesn’t always apply perfectly, it tends to be that the bigger the increase in housing prices is, the harder the economy falls.

Washington can paper over a weak economy with funny money — that shows up in places like inflated home prices that make existing owners feel good — but eventually the truth will out.

THEY’RE SPINNING LIKE A CENTRIFUGE OVER THE COMPANY’S MARKETING EXECS: Anheuser-Busch Heir Says Ancestors Would’ve ‘Rolled in Their Graves’ if They Saw Dylan Mulvaney on a Beer Can.

CHANGE? Democrats worry young people souring on party. “Della Volpe argued that although young voters appear to be getting more progressive in their values, fewer are identifying as Democrat or liberal, are paying close attention to political news and are likely to believe in politics as a means for system change. The share of younger voters who say they’ll ‘definitely’ vote in the 2024 race is now at 51 percent in the Harvard poll, down from 55 percent who said the same at this point in the 2020 race.”

UNEXPECTEDLY: New York Raised the Age of Criminal Liability to 18. You Can Imagine How That Turned Out.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Elon Musk wants to avoid another ‘rock tornado’ next time Starship launches. SpaceX just tested a way to prevent it.

The new water deluge system is designed to dampen the powerful effects caused by igniting the rocket’s engines during launch. Starship’s massive Super Heavy booster, needed to propel the vehicle into space, has 33 Raptor engines at its base — all of which are meant to fire simultaneously at liftoff.

Read more: SpaceX Starship Has Much Better Chance After Overhaul, Musk Says

The force of igniting so many Raptor engines at once proved to be quite damaging to the launchpad, as SpaceX learned during the first test flight of Starship. Though only 30 Raptor engines were initially ignited, they still caused what SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called a “rock tornado” underneath the launchpad. The launch sent chunks of concrete and debris thousands of feet into the air, damaging the pad and littering the nearby landscape.

To prevent another explosive event, SpaceX’s engineers have been installing steel plates underneath Starship’s launchpad, meant to deflect the immense heat and forces caused by the Raptor engines. Sunday’s test marked the first time that SpaceX attempted to test the deluge system while igniting the engines.

SpaceX didn’t immediately clarify if the ignition test was considered a success, however the host of the livestream, John Insprucker, said after the firing that Starship’s “pad looks good. The launch vehicle looks good.”

Launch pad debris might have been responsible for some of the engine troubles on Starship’s first orbital test flight in April.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Insufferable Soccer Women Will Have to Be Embarrassing at Home. “While I may not be a fan, I did know about the women’s team, largely because of the above-mentioned Ms. Rapinoe’s big mouth. She’s been one of the more tedious woke athletes who mistakenly thinks she understands world affairs enough to weigh in on them. Think Colin Kaepernick with purple hair.”

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Robert Kennedy Jr. announces lawsuit against Google for censorship.

THE POWER TO TAX IS THE POWER TO DESTROY, AND THAT’S KINDA THE POINT FOR RIGHTS-HATING LEFTIES: Gun-Grabbing Dems Want 1000% Tax on AR-15s.

I DARE YOU TO CROSS THIS LINE: Newsom Team Appears Agitated That DeSantis Accepted Debate Challenge.

ROBERT SPENCER: Here’s the Real Game Colin Kaepernick Is Playing. It’s Not Football. “Colin Kaepernick needs the people he no doubt thinks of as the old racists who run the NFL far more than they need him. And he doesn’t need to rejoin the NFL to benefit from them; all he has to do is go through this tired charade every year of appearing to be fit and ready to play.”

BILL WHITTLE: The True Story of the Atomic Bombs.

This is must-see TV.

MATT MARGOLIS: Jack Smith May Have Doomed His Case Against Trump.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Forget Cocaine Bear, We’re Looking for Cocaine Sharks. “This week we have the best dog person in the world, cocaine sharks, and Colorado Man doing his best impersonation of Florida Man — right down to the gator.”

KATIE PAVLICH: How Disgraced IRS Official Lois Lerner is Tied to Trump’s Latest Indictment.

KRUISER: I’m Endorsing ‘Generic Republican’ for President in 2024. “Full disclosure: I don’t think I’ve ever been this devoted to a presidential candidate.”

GOVERNMENT: Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: The Great Baby Formula Shortage of 2022.

With domestic supply chains snarled, it would have made sense for American grocery stores to turn to foreign producers for replacement supplies of baby formula. Unfortunately, there are “absurdly high” tariffs on imported formula, explains Gabriella Beaumont-Smith, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

“There are these distribution channels that are basically not established” because the tariffs make it too costly, she says. “And we’re talking about baby formula. This is a necessity and we shouldn’t be taxing it that high or at all.”

It took last year’s crisis for Congress to consider lifting those tariffs—and only on a temporary basis. The dairy lobby and other special interests like the isolated, and fragile, American market for baby formula just the way it is.

Much more at the link.

HMM: What if Trump Stops Playing Along? “It’s time for former — and possibly future — President Trump to grab that branch that’s sticking out halfway down and refuse to fall any further.”

THEY’RE NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS: AI Built To Hunt Extraterrestrial Intelligence Just Detected 8 New Promising Signals. “The team used the algorithm to analyze 480 hours of observations of 820 stars taken by the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The algorithm identified almost 3 million distinctive patterns, which were then further filtered down to just 20,515. Upon visual inspection, the team identified eight promising signals of interest.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: It Isn’t Just Disney — Not Even ‘Barbie’ Can Save Warner Bros.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Federal Judge Rules Against ATF Brace Rule. “The pistol brace rule would retroactively make millions of law-abiding Americans criminals for not registering them (which, for the left, is no doubt the point).”

DISCRIMINATION, STRAIGHT UP: ‘Wee Man’ Blasts Hollywood for Yanking Roles for Dwarf Actors in ‘Snow White.’

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Will Rude Movie Goers Crush the Barbenheimer Rebound?

It took a plastic doll and an atom bomb to end Hollywood’s pandemic hangover.

“Barbenheimer” turned July into a box office juggernaut and proved Americans had shaken free of the COVID-19 lockdowns at long last. Both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have legs, as they say in the business, meaning the films continue to draw huge crowds well into their theatrical runs.

That’s great news for both Hollywood and the theatrical model, the latter still struggling from pandemic lockdowns and the crush of A-list material on streaming services.

There’s just one problem.

Many of the “new” moviegoers are behaving badly. They talk, snap selfies and conduct phone conversations mid-movie.

I haven’t seen anything like this in southern Colorado but you big-city experiences may differ.